Copyright registration of compilations
Overview The U.S. Copyright Office has long accepted claims of registration based on the selection, coordination, or arrangement of uncopyrightable elements, because the Copyright Act specifically states that copyrightable authorship includes compilations.17 U.S.C. §103. The term "compilation" is defined in the Copyright Act: This definition's inclusion of the terms "preexisting material" or "data" suggest that individually uncopyrightable elements may be compiled into a copyrightable whole. The legislative history of the 1976 Copyright Act supports this interpretation, stating that a compilation Viewed in a vacuum, it might appear that any organization of preexisting material may be copyrightable. However, the Copyright Act, the legislative history and the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in ''Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Serv. Co. lead to a different conclusion. In Feist, interpreting the congressional language in the section 101 definition of "compilation," the Supreme Court found protectable compilations to be limited to "a work formed by the collection and assembling of preexisting material or data that are selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship."Feist, at 356, quoting 17 U.S.C. §101 ("compilation") (emphasis by the Court). The Court stated: The Court's decision in Feist clarified that some selections, coordinations, or arrangements will not qualify as works of authorship under the statutory definition of "compilation" in section 101. However, a question that was not present in the facts of Feist and therefore not considered by the Court, is whether the selection, coordination, or arrangement of preexisting materials must relate to the section 102 categories of copyrightable subject matter. In Feist, Rural Telephone's alphabetical directory was found deficient due to a lack of originality, i.e., of sufficient creativity. Had the items contained in the directory (names, addresses and telephone numbers) been selected, coordinated, or arranged in a sufficiently original manner, there is no question that the resulting compilation would have fit comfortably within the category of literary works. But what if an original selection, coordination, or arrangement of preexisting material did not fall within a category of section 102 authorship? Although the Feist decision did not address this question, the Copyright Office has concluded that the statute and relevant legislative history require that to be registrable, a compilation must fall within one or more of the categories of authorship listed in section 102. In other words, if a selection and arrangement of elements does not result in a compilation that is subject matter within one of the categories identified in section 102(a), the Copyright Office will refuse registration. The Office arrived at this conclusion in accordance with the instruction of the Supreme Court in Feist: "the established principle that a court should give effect, if possible, to every clause and word of a statute," citing Moskal v. United States, 498 U.S. 103, 109–10 (1990). Applying this principle, the Office has found that in addition to the statutory definition of "compilation" in section 101, Congress also provided clarification about the copyrightable authorship in compilations in section 103(a) of the Copyright Act: Section 103 makes it clear that compilation authorship is a subset of the section 102(a) categories, not a separate and distinct category. Section 103 and the definition of "compilation" in Section 101 also mark a departure from the treatment of compilations under the 1909 Act, which listed composite works and compilations as falling within the class of "books." The 1976 Act significantly broadened the scope of compilation authorship to include certain selection, coordination, or arrangement that results in a work of authorship. But that expansion also makes it clear that not every selection, coordination, or arrangement of material is copyrightable. Only selection, coordination, or arrangement that falls within section 102 authorship is copyrightable, i.e., is selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship. Moreover, section 103 provides that compilations fall within "the subject matter of copyright as specified by section 102," and the legislative history of the 1976 Act confirms what this means: "Section 103 complements section 102: A compilation or derivative work is copyrightable if it represents an 'original work of authorship' and falls within one or more of the categories listed in section 102."H.R. Rep. 94–1476 at 57 (1976) (emphasis added). This requirement indicates that compilation authorship is limited not only by the tripartite structure of the statutory definition of "compilation," but that in addition, a creative selection, coordination, or arrangement must also result in one or more congressionally recognized categories of authorship. Although the statute together with the legislative history warrant this conclusion, it is far from obvious when the statutory definition of "compilation" is read in isolation. Moreover, other portions of the legislative history have obscured this interpretation. The legislative history states that the term "works of authorship" is said to "include" the seven categories of authorship listed in section 102 (now eight with the addition of "architectural works"), but that the listing is "illustrative and not limitative."H.R. Rep 94–1476, at 53. If these categories of authorship are merely illustrative, may courts or the Copyright Office recognize new categories of copyrightable authorship? Given that Congress chose to include some categories of authorship in the statute, but not other categories, did Congress intend to authorize the courts or the Copyright Office to recognize authorship that Congress did not expressly include in the statute? For example, the decision not to include typeface as copyrightable authorship was a deliberate decision.H.R. Rep 94–1476, at 55. Could Congress have intended the courts or the Copyright Office to second-guess such decisions, or accept forms of authorship never considered by Congress? Again, the answer lies in the legislative history. First, the legislative history states that "In using the phrase 'original works of authorship,' rather than 'all the writings of an author,' the committee's purpose was to avoid exhausting the constitutional power of Congress to legislate in this field, and to eliminate the uncertainties arising from the latter phrase."Id at 51. Thus, one goal of the illustrative nature of the categories was to prevent foreclosing the congressional creation of new categories: This passage suggests that Congress intended the statute to be flexible as to the scope of established categories, but also that Congress also intended to retain control of the designation of entirely new categories of authorship. The legislative history goes on to state that the illustrative nature of the section 102 categories of authorship was intended to provide "sufficient flexibility to free the courts from rigid or outmoded concepts of the scope of particular categories."Id. at 53 (emphasis added). The flexibility granted to the courts is limited to the scope of the categories designated by Congress in section 102(a). Congress did not delegate authority to the courts to create new categories of authorship. Congress reserved this option to itself. If the federal courts do not have authority to establish new categories of copyrightable subject matter, it necessarily follows that the Copyright Office also has no such authority in the absence of any clear delegation of authority to the Register of Copyrights. Unless a compilation of materials results a work of authorship that falls within one or more of the eight categories of authorship listed in section 102(a) of title 17, the Copyright Office will refuse registration in such a claim. Thus, the Copyright Office will not register a work in which the claim is in a "compilation of ideas," or a "selection and arrangement of handtools" or a "compilation of rocks." Neither ideas, handtools, nor rocks may be protected by copyright (although an expression of an idea, a drawing of a handtool or a photograph of rock may be copyrightable). On the other hand, the Copyright Office would register a claim in an original compilation of the names of the author's 50 favorite restaurants. While neither a restaurant nor the name of a restaurant may be protected by copyright, a list of 50 restaurant names may constitute a literary work — a category of work specified in section 102(a) — based on the author's original selection and/or arrangement of the author's fifty favorite restaurants. In addition to the requirement that a compilation result in a section 102(a) category of authorship, the Copyright Office has held that section 102(b) precludes certain compilations that amount to an idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work. The Copyright Office has concluded that the section 102(a) categories of copyrightable subject matter not only establish what is copyrightable, but also necessarily serve to limit copyrightable subject matter as well. Accordingly, when a compilation does not result in one or more congressionally-established categories of authorship, claims in compilation authorship will be refused. References Source * Registration of Claims to Copyright (in Compilations). See also * Copyright registration of databases * Guidelines for Registration of Fact-Based Compilations * Memorandum on Copyrightability of Compilations Category:Copyright Category:U.S. Copyright Office